Thursday, December 20, 2012

There's
enough creativity in the delicious Alphabet Soup online
exhibition over at Clive's place to
warm and lighten the rest of this winter, no matter how
cold, wet and windy it is where you are. Every entry
is bursting with flavour and individuality - if you haven't
already done so, go and dip into it now.

The brief was to
limit entries to black and white, plus one colour.

My
own contributions are included and I'll duplicate
them here....well, why not? (see larger images at Clive's ArtLog and at the main Blaugustine).

The one below is a new black version of a colour one which I originally posted in April 2005 and then made a video of in 2009. I won't put the link to the video here right now because it's going to appear at the Alphabet Soup later on�.

Friday, December 14, 2012

NEW HEADER AT THE BLAUGUSTINE HOME

I like it now but
might change my mind again in future. Any opinions?

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Later today the
long-lost portrait of Rennie Walker (see November
1st post ) will start its journey all the way
to California. He
has bought it and when it
will be hung in their living room, he and his
wife Kathy will send me a photo. We are all excited about
this unexpected and happy conclusion to a surprising
story.

Sunday, December 09, 2012

Tripped on gritty
asphalt while running to cross the street in Camden Town
just as the traffic lights were changing to red and landed
bang on my knees in front of a bus and other vehicles
about to surge forward. The only person to rescue me
was a Japanese girl who came over and gave me her hand
to pull me to my feet. I wasn't down for more than a
few seconds but rather shaken and I leaned on a bollard
to steady myself. At that moment a young woman
rushed over from across the road and gently asked me
if I was allright - she said she saw me from the
window of the bank where she works and would I
like to come in and sit down? I thanked her and went
into a cafe where I drank comforting hot chocolate
and massaged my sore knees.

Did you ever notice
that mishaps tend to come in clusters? And that they
tend to occur when the colour of one's mood is
an angry red or maybe dark blue? That's just how it
was on Friday. The day began with a cancelled appointment,
ongoing dental irritation and the sudden breakdown of
my television when I wanted to watch something. So I
went to Camden Town in a really bad mood, muttering inwardly,
and that's when I fell. You may call this kind
of thinking woo-woo but I do believe
it's possible for the inner to affect the outer, just
as the outer affects the inner. A friend told me
that when he was depressed his car stopped working and
various electrical equipment would malfunction. Coincidence?
I doubt it.

Anyway, apart from
dental hassles which are too-slowly being dealt with,
I'm okay now and a couple of days ago had the pleasure
of meeting Phil Cooper who blogs at Hedgecrows.
I was introduced to him via Clive
Hicks-Jenkins' terrific
Artlog, which not only lets us share Clive's own
wonderfully abundant and diverse creativity but also
frequently calls our attention to the work of others.
Thus I saw some examples of the marvellous collages
Phil is making for the about-to-begin Alphabet
Soup online exhibition which
Clive initiated (I've sent a couple of entries) and which
is being curated by Lucy
Kempton and Shellie
Byatt. I invited Phil over so we could talk printmaking
and other matters and thoroughly enjoyed his visit.
He is so modest that if you hadn't
seen his work you wouldn't guess how strong and confident
his talent is. I strongly urge you to visit his blog
and keep up to date with what he's doing. Thanks to the
blogging phenomenon, this former stranger is now a friend.

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

I finished it in
February 1984 and the year I spent working on it daily
was one of the happiest experiences of my life.
I tried to express enjoyment and community
in the composition, incorporating about sixty portraits
of regulars at the centre - pensioners, mothers and children,
teenagers, kitchen staff, organisers - all assembled
within a 'geometrified' version of the interior and the
neighbourhood.

The centre offered
cheap meals for pensioners and every day at lunchtime
they poured in. I would chat with them while I painted
and sometimes there would be sing-songs, all the old
favourites they knew by heart. One of the regulars was
a skilled accordéoniste and I'd
sing my Piaf repertoire -
they always wanted La Vie en Rose! I've got a
tape of one of these rambunctious sessions which makes
me very nostalgic.

I painted myself into the picture and on a poster-like rectangle, I asked my models to sign their names. In the middle of the wall I painted my work table with brushes and tubes of acrylic paint laid out on it. �

(click on pictures for larger views)

A couple of months before I completed it, the mural was inaugurated by Ron Heffernan, Mayor of Camden at the time. The occasion was covered by the local press and one tabloid (Daily Telegraph, January 30, 1984) but not a single critic or other art establishment person was, as far as I know, ever aware of the existence of this particular oeuvre. Which is perhaps just as well since its visible life was cruelly extinguished after only ten years.

Perhaps its DNA still lingers beneath the layers of industrial paint with which the wall was covered in 1994. I only found out about its obliteration long after the event when a friend told me he'd been to the centre and was astonished that my mural had disappeared. The new managers at the Community Centre never contacted me about their decision and when I went there to protest, the explanation they gave was that the mural was no longer relevant because most of the pensioners I portrayed had died. My jaw dropped to the floor but I refrained from saying that a great deal of art would be banished from museums if this reasoning was enforced. I looked into the legalities but apparently, since I had been employed to paint it, I was technically not the owner of this work. A law concerning the defacing of artworks did come into being later but too late to apply in this case. The only concession the managers would make was to put up in the entrance hall a small framed photo of the mural before its cover-up.

Fortunately I have slides of the entire wall, with close-ups. But that was the end of my mural aspirations. �

Monday, December 03, 2012

When I was an art
student a long time ago, inspired by early Italian frescoes
and the carved walls of ancient Egypt, I thought I wanted
to be a muralist. So I enrolled at the Instituto Allende
in Mexico in order to learn mural techniques. The two
photos below are from that
time,
described in
my autobiography-in-progress (no progress! But
I will get back to it, yes).

Some time later,
when I lived in Paraguay, I won
a competition (scroll to the bottom of this
page) to
design and execute an abstract mural for
a new hotel in Asunción. But
it was not until the 1980s in London that
an opportunity arose to really exercise
my wall-painting inclinations. I
happened to see a job advertisement to
join a team of artists, organised by CSV
(Community Service Volunteers) to paint murals
for public locations in the borough of
Camden. I
was interviewed, accepted and began
a thrilling, if ephemeral, adventure. Ephemeral
for reasons I willl explain.

There were seven
of us, artists of various backgrounds, ages
and experience but all keen to use
our skills on a large scale.
We
discussed ideas and made general
plans but each person was responsible
for designing and executing different sections
of some murals while in other projects
only one artist was needed. This was an
ideal situation since I prefer to work independently
but also enjoy the camaraderie of a congenial
group.

On the façade of Godwin
Court, a building on
Crowndale Road near Mornington Crescent,
my designated section was alongside the
entrance to a mother-and-child clinic.
I decided to paint it as though you
were looking through the wall into the waiting
room and reception area. I took photos
and made a lot of
preparatory drawings, transferred my final
sketch to the rough brick wall and thoroughly
enjoyed the experience of painting in the
middle of a busy street, cars and buses whizzing
past and curious pedestrians stopping by
to chat. The other artists were busy on their
own sections of the long wall but at lunchtime
we would all go to the pub, like good workmen,
and talk about art and life and all that
jazz. It was the best job imaginable.

Sadly,
all that's left of this mural are the photos
and slides I and other people took of it.
This is not the age of sacred walls! The
lovingly painted surfaces gradually became
fair game for the aerosol and magic marker-wielding
vandals of the neighbourhood and several
years of this activity later, Camden Council
decided to cover the entire façade with grafitti-proof
gloss paint. None of us were ever consulted
or told our work was being destroyed and
there's no law that could have prevented
it. Nevertheless I'm proud of this work and
of the huge assignment I was offered next.

The Hampden Community
Centre off St. Pancras Road was a popular
meeting place for local pensioners and teenagers
and when the idea of a mural in the common
room was suggested, the organisers embraced it enthusiastically.
I was still part of the Mural Team but the
other artists were busy in various locations
and I was delighted to take on the 50'
x 12' wall entirely on my own. The scale
drawing I submitted was approved by a committee
and I began working on the wall on Valentine's
Day, February 14th, 1983.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Since
I didn't have much to sell, I only booked
a half table at Comiket
but
it's tricky to arrange a display
on such a small surface without encroaching
on your neighbours in the other half. Fortunately
my table-sharers, Myriad
Editions,
were friendly and helpful.

I was still
fussing with the alignment of four
books and few cards when my first visitor
of the day stopped by. To my delight it was Alison
Bechdel. She was leafing through My
Life Unfolds and
I explained how the original
came about. She seemed to connect with my
autobiographic images and bought a copy of
the book instantly. I must admit that I was
not familiar with her work until recently
but having discovered it, I'm impressed
with her unsentimental self-awareness, humour
and directness and have ordered
her latest graphic memoir Are
You My Mother?

I would have liked
to talk longer with Alison but she was booked
as the first artist of the day to go up on
stage and draw a comic strip. I was too
far away to get a decent shot but you
can just about make out her hand
on the big screen in the photo below. She
began by drawing a grid of blank frames then
proceeded to confidently fill each one with
the figures of her story. I was astonished
by the ease and speed with which she, and
later the other 'performing artists'
drew their comic strips, some of them highly
detailed. My own process is usually agonisingly
slow and full of erasures since I keep changing
my mind along the way. Lesson to learn: have
a fixed plan.

Among the friends I was very happy to see during the day was Jean who is attentively examining My Life Unfolds below. She has just blogged about her visit at tasting rhubarb.

Deep in conversation with Colin, Philip is unaware that his purchase may not be approved by the Authority.

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

You've chosen Obama and not Romney...whew!
Even though Obama has been a disappointment in so many
ways, not the hero who will make everything better that
we all imagined four years ago, he is still preferable
to The Mitt. I'm not going to engage in political discussion
- other people do that so much better - I'm just
very relieved at the election result.

Back here in my small world, I'm
getting ready for the table I'll be standing behind this
Saturday, 10 November, at the Comiket
Festival. If you're in London, do come along
and say hello. Of course La
Vie en Rosé will be there, as well as
copies of the printed version of My
Life Unfolds and a few other things, including
postcards of my graphic story Hindsight .

Saturday, November 03, 2012

Winning is nice. In September I
won a voucher for £20 worth of handmade organic ice cream
in a raffle during the street party (am
waiting for the right occasion before I collect it).

This is
a preamble to some philosophising which
I would not be doing had I been the winner or the
runner-up in a competition which
I entered recently. Had I won, all I would be writing
today is YES! YES! YES! alongside a photo of myself making
that triumphant air-punching gesture that is so popular
among footballers and other winning types. Obviously
I didn't win since I am philosophising.

Tomorrow in the Observer the winner
and the runner-up of this year's graphic
story competition (a graphic short
story in four pages) will be published. Last night I
attended a party in Foyles where the winners and their
entries were exhibited and discussed by the judges and
previous winners. I liked the winner and the runner-up
but not having seen all the other entries, I can't say
if they were the best.

In sport it's
fairly easy to measure who wins - the fastest runner
is the fastest runner. But in the arts it gets a bit
murky. Winners and losers are largely decided
by the prevailing cultural, commercial, and aesthetic
zeitgeist and by those occupying significant positions
within it. If you fit inside that zeitgeist you're likely
to win; if you don't, you won't.

If that sound like sour
grapes, really it's not (snarl) I'm aware that
I don't fit into the zeitgeist, whatever it is, and
never have fitted it. I'm not an Outsider artist in the
accepted sense of that term, but neither am I an insider.
I've drawn cartoons but I'm not a comics artist. In general,
I never know where *any* of my work fits. I'm glad (sob)
I didn't win because it forces me to examine what it
is I truly want to achieve creatively and...erm...okay.
End of philosophy. Fook the zeitgeist.

My entry to
this competition, Hindsight, deliberately
side-steps the usual comics format. I wanted to do
something more like the recent My Life
Unfolds and I recycled some of the stencils
I had cut for that concertina book, as you can see,
and it's autobiography again. I wanted the technique
to be more painterly than comics-influenced so I
made collagraph cardboard plates for each page, inked
them up intaglio, printed them with my
etching press and then hand-coloured them, with lots
of texture. The text can be interpreted in
any way you wish, there could be more than one meaning.

If you want your own mini-version, I've
had some postcards printed as a set of four cards
in a cellophane bag. I'll be selling them
(along with La Vie en Rosé and some other
books) at my stand in the Comiket
Festival next Saturday,
10th November, 11 am - 7pm. If you're in London, come
and see me there.

You can order the
cards from me: £2.50 for the set of 4 cards, plus postage
to wherever you are. They are beautifully printed by
MOO which
I can highly recommend. If you've never used them let
me know and I can email you a voucher for 10% off your
first order. No, I don't work for them! They give this
voucher to all their customers.

Thursday, November 01, 2012

I don't believe in coincidence.
To me, Co-Incidence (an unlikely meeting between two
incidents) is a phenomenon which is much more interesting
and, yes, mysterious, than the purely rationalist dismissal
of it. But, rest assured, I'm not going to launch into
mumbojumble. The story itself is good enough.

On December
23, 2009 I wrote about and posted a photo here
of a portrait I'd painted in 1981 of Rennie Walker . In my
memory, as I wrote Rennie (who had suddenly contacted
me, wondering what happened to it) I had painted
over it and it was gone forever, apart from a small
snapshot of him sitting beside the work-in-progress.
Feeling sad and guilty about the loss, I sent Rennie
a digital re-working of the portrait that I did from
that snapshot. I thought that was the end of the
story.

Never
trust memory: it often invents things when it
can't remember the facts.

Late last
night, I was looking for some frames in a crowded
closet in my studio. I opened a large container that
I hadn't touched since I moved to my present home about
seventeen years ago. Inside it, amongst various other
things, was a tall (4'
x 5') rolled-up canvas. Curious to know what it was,
I immediately unrolled it and....the
lost portrait of Rennie Walker! Fresh as the day it was
born.

Here it is, the original, finished
painting, rediscovered. And below, the earlier stages.

Of course I instantly emailed Rennie to tell him the news. It looks like this painting has found its home.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Yes, a printed paper one that you
can put in your pocket and read on the train or in the
bath and you can order it right now at this
link where there is
a full preview. The book is 68 pages, 5"
x 8", colour cover, black and white content
with 13 illustrations. I decided to convert my original
colour images to greyscale to make it less expensive,
both to manufacture and to sell.

The economics are as
follows : I'm selling the softcover book for £6.00
or hardback for £14.50 (plus postage). Blurb charges
me £13.50 per copy for hardback and £3.50 per copy for
B/W softback so I'll make only a tiny profit but I want
to sell millions - oh, allright, dozens. So please
put the book on your Christmas list and tell everybody
about it: can it do that thing they call going viral?
Remember you read the story here first.

Although
I love Blurb and they've been very helpful and I
will use them again, I must admit that their Booksmart
software is hair-tearingly infuriating to work with and
I'm not a beginner in that sort of thing. But let's leave
niggling aside and focus on the joy of accomplishment.

As a life-long procrastinator,
I can go for months avoiding and displacing and distracting
but when I finally get down to something I've been
putting off, it's full blast, staying up all night
for days, eating dinner at midnight and breakfast at
4 pm, staggering around bleary and dishevelled until
the damn thing is finished. That's what I've done and
all I need now is approval, hugs, and lots of
sales.

And next week I will know the result
of something else which I have not spoken of but have
been busy with.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Kentish Town is my neighbourhood
and The
Kentishtowner,
a very useful local online daily newspaper,
sent me a questionnaire, which I answered. They also
asked for my photo, which I sent, but I didn't know they
would also choose some images from my site. I'm really
chuffed to be featured in their series, Ich Bin Kentishtowner.

This all came about through the
auspices of my neighbour and new friend, the very good
writer Alison
Chandler , who organised the editing and publishing
of a little printed magazine for the day of our street
party last month. She sent two budding journalists:
Ellie, thirteen, and Alice, eleven, to interview me for
that publication and they did a fine job. The editors
of The Kentishtowner (a completely different publication)
came to the street party and later contacted Alison to
ask if I'd answer their quiz. Of course I did! Many thanks
to all concerned.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

At the National Library of Wales
in Aberystwyth the exhibition of accordion books is over
but it will move on next year to a few other venues,
dates not yet finalised.

I had a surprise
gift from a close relative, who does not wish to
be named or praised,
but at least I can share with you a photo of this delightful
creation which will forever remind me of the event.

If you haven't yet seen My Life
Unfolds all its pages are here . And at the same link, you can go to BLURB to see (and even buy!) another version of this unique book.

I managed to install
the Disqus comments thingy at my main Blaugustine blog but took it out again because it doesn't allow you to have more than one comment box per page. So I'm looking for another service which will permit this. Meanwhile please comment here, if you wish!

Sunday, October 07, 2012

I've been wholly taken up with
finishing something which has to be delivered early next
week (more on this when I've heard results) so the
Blaug has been neglected, again. And comments have vanished
since the commenting service Haloscan/JSKit ceased
to operate from 1st October.

Now I have to figure out
how to set up the Disqus comments service but until
I do, please leave some words here just
so I know I still have a few cyber-friends!

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

I stayed near Crickhowell, a beautiful
part of the Brecon Beacons, in a tiny, cozy two-room
cottage, which was fine since I'm only four feet eleven
inches high and not very wide but even so, the steep
and narrow spiral staircase to the bedroom required some
careful contortions. When I wasn't
walking and sketching in the countryside or visiting
nearby towns, I'd sit indoors and draw.

The found-object
frame around the mirror is one of the thoughtful touches
around the cottage.

Even when - especially
when - the sky is cloudy, at this time of year the greens
are of almost neon brightness while
the blackness of the hills is streaked with purples,
browns, reds and patches of emerald. I was particularly
spellbound by reflections in the river Usk and by the
copper-coloured water of the Brecon canal. Narrow
boats silently glide by as you walk along the tree-lined
banks. Some of the boats are manned by amateur
skippers, worriedly looking straight ahead, expecting
trouble.

And there were sheep of course.
Plump and peaceful, eating and resting, resting and
eating, dutifully taking care of their woolliness.

I spent a few hours in Abergavenny
on a day packed with crowds for the Food Festival, which
was fun. But what I liked best were the side-streets
and the people at the bus queue going home.

Some teddies in this shop are very
old, very rare and very expensive.

On my next to last day, I was privileged
to be invited to tea at the home of friends of Clive Hicks-Jenkins:
William
Gibbs and his civil partner Sonthaya. By happy coincidence
they live very near the village where I was staying
and Clive suggested I look them up. Due to a stupid (my stupidity)
dental mishap, I nearly cancelled the appointment but fortunately
I was persuaded to ignore vanity and come anyway. It was
a memorable afternoon with this most interesting and
hospitable couple, a marvellous house and garden, and
an art collection that so stunned and inspired
me that I
quite forgot to take photos. Besides the achievements mentioned at the above
link, William is a patron of the arts, collector, critic,
lecturer and chairman of various Arts Trusts. With
all this activity he still manages to appear
relaxed and at ease. Enthusiasm for life and art and
a discerning sensibility is evident in every corner of
the home that William and Sonthaya share and I'm so
grateful that I didn't miss this opportunity to meet
them.

Still seeing the week in Wales
in my mind's eye and long may it linger. I took a lot
more photos and might post them on Flickr later on.
A few more drawings also to come.